Cooking With Kids

Visiting friends with a toddler recently, we made calzones together. Standing on a stepstool, the toddler helped to mix the ricotta and ham filling and knead the pizza dough. He even brushed the calzones with olive oil after we stuffed and closed them.

Before we started, I imagined all kinds of messy scenarios: A handful of flour thrown on the floor. An attempt to eat the filling,which had one raw egg, in fistfuls. Olive oil painted on the walls or Mommy.

Nothing like that happened. Standing close to him and showing him how to do each step before he tried himself, he was able to figure it out and smile, too.

It might seem intimidating at first to cook with kids. I does take some extra preparation since they can’t do everything and they might initially be frustrated. The grownup’s job is to set up the bowls (preferably plastic) in such a way that your child can reach and participate in small tasks like mixing. For safety, my friend says, "hot corner," when she opens the oven. Her son knows to stand quietly in a corner far from the heat. Once he oven is closed, he returns to helping.

As they get used to cooking and mature, they’ll be able to do more and more. Think of the great meals you’ll be able to prepare together in the future! They’ll thank you later for the skill that you’ve given them for life.

You can find my two favorite cookbooks geared towards preparing a meal with your child here. This blog, Cooking With My Kid, has some great suggestions, too.

Simple Cherry Tomato Marinara Sauce

To follow up on yesterday’s post on making calzone, here is a simple cherry tomato marinara that you can quickly prepare and serve with your calzone. It is a great light sauce for the spring or summer that's great on pasta, too!


Ingredients:

1 yellow onion, diced

2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

1 pint sweet cherry tomatoes, sliced

salt and pepper to taste

optional: 3 large basil leaves, sliced



Directions:

Slowly sauté the diced onion in the olive oil until they are translucent. Keep the heat low to medium to avoid burning. Add the sliced cherry tomatoes and lightly boil until soft. Add salt and pepper to taste. If you have some fresh basil on hand, mix it into the sauce at the last moment so the basil retains its flavor. You could also add dried basil or oregano.

This makes about 1.5 cups of sauce. It can be made a day or two ahead.

Calzone

Calzone are even easier than pizza to make at home. Pizza can be tricky to slide onto the pizza stone, but the calzone, little packages that they are, help to solve that problem.

Following the Silver Spoon cookbook recipe, I recently made calzone with ricotta, mozzarella, prosciutto and salami. The recipe isn’t available online, but they do offer the Fisherman’s Pizza recipe from the pizza section.

I admit that I cheated (again) and used Trader Joe’s pizza dough. It is simple enough to make, but we had company and I wanted to simplify the process. When I brushed the dough with oil, I added a little salt to the olive oil to help bring out the flavor in the dough.

Like with the pizza, the key to moving the calzone from the wooden paddle and then onto the pizza stone is using corn meal (polenta) underneath the calzone. As you are brushing oil on the dough, filling it, and then folding it over, periodically wiggle the paddle to make sure that it isn’t sticking. If it starts to stick (especially when you are pressing the edges to close the pocket), peel up the bottom and add some more corn meal.

The fun part is deciding what to put inside of your calzone. I went in the traditional direction of cured meats and cheeses, but you can choose anything. It is a great way to use small portions of leftovers like cooked spinach or sausage.

Tomorrow: simple spring marinara recipe to serve with your calzone.